After Parkland, one Florida county's solution: Armed guards

By Ryan McKinnon ryan.mckinnon@heraldtribune.com

Wednesday

Feb 13, 2019 at 10:11 AM

BRADENTON -- It has been nearly a year since a shooter at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland killed 17 people and wounded 17 others. Since then, school districts statewide have beefed up security, dealt with copycat threats and scrambled to meet a raft of new mandates imposed by lawmakers in the weeks following the shooting.

On Monday, Manatee County School District Superintendent Cynthia Saunders, along with Manatee Sheriff Rick Wells, Palmetto Police Chief Scott Tyler and other law enforcement and education leaders held a news conference at Manatee High School to discuss how the school district and local governments have improved school security in the year since the Parkland shooting.

“The world as we know it, at least in terms of school safety and security, changed Feb. 14, 2018,” Saunders said. "... I can say with all honesty, from the moment that we learned of what was taking place in Parkland, the (district) reached out to law enforcement leaders in our community to answer the question that all of you wanted to know: 'What are we going to do now?'"

Saunders said the collaboration between law enforcement and school district officials had yielded results.

“We can genuinely say the schools of Manatee County are safer today than they were a year ago,” Saunders said.

The largest change in school security since last year's attack has been the added presence of an armed guard on every school campus in Manatee. Following the shooting, state lawmakers passed the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Act, which required school districts to post at least one “safe school officer” at each school. Leaders in Manatee had originally hoped to meet the requirement by expanding the number of School Resource Officers, which are sworn law enforcement officers posted at schools. However, county commissioners balked at the price tag of expanding the sheriff's force to meet the new requirement. The School Board and commissioners failed to reach a compromise on how much each entity would contribute, so the school district established a Guardian program, using state funds to offset the cost of hiring and training armed guards to staff the elementary schools in the unincorporated areas of the county, which were the only schools without Resource Officers.

Wells said the Sheriff's Office had trained 47 guardians so far, with five candidates in training. The training includes 132 hours of firearms and tactical training, and 12 hours on legal issues.

“We are very pleased to see the quality of applicants that we received early on,” Wells said. “A lot of retired law enforcement, retired military, people who wanted to continue to serve their community.”

One school in Manatee County has implemented a particularly aggressive solution, the Washington Post reported. Manatee School for the Arts, located in Manatee County, Fla., has hired two combat veterans to serve as “guardians” for the school, each equipped with a Kel-Tec semiautomatic rifle, a Glock handgun and a protective plate carrier.

School Board members had initially been resistant to using guardians. After an active shooter drill last spring, board members Charlie Kennedy and Scott Hopes both said having sworn law enforcement officers in each school was a top priority. However, Saunders said Monday that the guardian program had worked out as a "really good compromise."

"It has worked very well for us," Saunders said. "I do not see right now that we have a need or a reason to change."

In addition to the armed presence now at every school, the district completed a safety audit of each facility to determine vulnerabilities. Saunders said as of Monday every school had a buzzer system to enter the building, and upgraded video monitoring systems. School board member Scott Hopes said the district had contracted with an engineering firm to do a safety audit of each school, including looking at security technology, fencing, visual barriers and protective areas for front office staff. Saunders said those recommendations would be compiled into the district’s 5-year capital improvement plan.

Students in Manatee schools will participate in a moment of silence on Thursday to honor the victims of last year's attack.

Watch + Listen: Below, Palm Beach Post journalist Liz Balmaseda talks about what has changed in Florida schools since Parkland, stating, "I think Florida has become more militant because of this... You have the kids who have become very militant when it has to do with the gun debate. And then there are other people... like the parent that I profiled, whose militancy has taken a completely different approach. I really zoomed in on one area, with one parent, and it was just kind of heartbreaking really to hear him speak and to hear him recount that day." .embed-container { position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%; height: 0; overflow: hidden; max-width: 100%; } .embed-container iframe, .embed-container object, .embed-container embed { position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; }

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